When it Doesn't Hurt
by medicgirl
Summary: Sometimes Wilson's job really sucks
1. When it doesn't hurt

Author's note: This weekend was a nightmare for paramedics, especially in my town. Sometimes my job sucks, and I thought maybe Wilson thinks so too...

Disclaimer: They're not mine. They're only my chosen method of stress relief.

"So," asked House, tapping his cane against the floor. "Just how many of those have you had?"

Wilson didn't look up at him, and briefly considered not answering. But as that would have been rude, considering that he was currently trying his best to drink himself into a coma in the other man's lounge, he raised his glass of scotch to his friend and said in a remarkably steady voice, "Not nearly enough."

He could count the number of times he'd seen Wilson drunk without ever having to take off his shoes, and would barely need the second hand. Sure, he had drank beer with him, even seen him slightly buzzed, but seeing him like this was totally different. He was sprawled on the couch in the diagnostics lounge, his tie removed and crumpled in the corner like it had been thrown and his white dress shirt discarded, leaving him in dress slacks and a white t-shirt. His shoes and socks had been shoved roughly under the couch. More disturbing was the half-empty bottle of scotch on the floor beside him. This was new territory. Not even at his worst after Julie left had he seen the otherwise well-adjusted, well-put-together doctor at this level of dishevelment. "You want to talk about it?"

Wilson laughed roughly. "Talk about it? No. And I'm not drunk enough to believe you really mean that." He ran his fingers through his short brown hair and finished off the glass. Groping blindly for the bottled, he finally managed to refill it without spilling a drop. House noted with some alarm that with the amount of alcohol missing from that bottle Wilson should be almost comatose, not still steady-handed enough to pour his own drinks. "I wish I was drunk enough to believe it. But I can't seem to get drunk. Why can't I just be drunk?"

House was well aware of the phenomena of strong enough emotions disabling the effects of alcohol. That made it a mystery. A diagnostic mystery. He had never seen Wilson too upset to get drunk. "So pretend you are drunk enough and tell me what's wrong."

Wilson shook his head and stared down the couch at his bare feet. "Not you."

"Huh?"

Wilson finally looked up. His brown eyes were remarkably clear, marred by neither tears nor alcoholic haze. Meeting the gaze for as long as he could stand, he drained half the scotch in his glass with one drink, not even wincing as it went down his throat. "Can't talk to you about it. Maybe Cameron. Has she left yet?"

House winced. That had actually hurt. He didn't even know words could still hurt him. "Can't we just pretend I have a heart of gold and a nice ass?"

"Go away, House. Go get a hooker. I'll even pay her if you'll leave me alone."

House sat down in the chair, scooting it over to Wilson's line of sight. "I'm not leaving you here like this. Especially with you drinking my scotch and not offering me any."

"It's not yours," Wilson replied, getting to his feet steadily and bringing back a coffee cup. He poured House a full cup of the strong drink. "I brought my own this time."

The wheels were turning quickly in House's mind. "If you didn't want to talk to me, why are you in here? You have you own office, even your own lounge. And it has TiVo."

Wilson looked everywhere but at his friend. "It smells like cancer in there."

House filed that response away to question him about more when he felt better. The mystery had gotten deeper. It was work related, but how? "As opposed to in here, where it smells like the cheap air freshener the wombat brought in?"

Wilson shook his head. "You wouldn't understand. In fact, you'd laugh at me, and I couldn't take that right now, so please let it go. Or if I have to talk, send in Cameron, or even Chase. But not you."

"Why not me?"

He flopped his head back against the wall, not even reacting when his head slammed into the wall with considerable force. "Because I need someone who can actually still feel something! Because I can't right now!"

Even House's mind couldn't make sense of that. "What do you mean?"

He sighed. "If I explain it the best I can, will you go away?" House nodded solemnly, and Wilson abandoned the alcohol that wasn't helping anyway to pace around the room. "What do you want to know?"

House rolled his eyes. He said he'd tell, he didn't say he'd make it easy… "Okay, for starters, why were you in my department trying in vain to drink yourself numb, when you seem to think you already are. Second, what kind of stress are you under that is strong enough to keep you from being able to drink yourself numb. Or, more numb, as the case may be. Third, why does your job repulse you so much you think you can smell cancer when you delivered no death sentences today, even gave two remission notices, and haven't lost a patient in a week. And you took that remarkably well, even with it being a kid. Fourth…well, actually that's it."

He looked up at where Wilson was pacing, and was amazed at the expression on his face. The pain that had been there earlier was gone, replaced by the darkest anger he had ever seen on the gentle oncologist's face. It was frightening, and House wasn't sure who it was aimed at. "I handled it remarkably well, huh?"

"Uh, yeah…" said House, taking a sip of his scotch, confused. "Like a professional."

"Yeah," said Wilson in a flat voice, a dangerous anger still etched into his handsome features. "Like a professional executioner. Congratulations, House. I've finally turned into you!"

House would never admit to this, but he was completely and totally lost. "What are you talking about?"

"A nine year old kid dies of lymphoma and I move on like I stepped on a bug. He died, House, and I feel nothing!"

This was serious. Well, not normally to House, but now it was serious to Wilson, and that made it serious to House. "What do you want to feel?"

"I don't know! Something! Hurt, sad, anything!"

House did something then that he would deny to his dying day. He got up, leaving his cane leaning against the chair, and stepped in front of Wilson. Putting his hands on the agitated doctor's shoulders, he looked him straight in the eye. As the blue eyes searched the brown ones, the anger faded to something like despair. Content that he had defused the immediate threat of Wilson putting his fist through the wall, he guided him back to the couch and sat beside him. "Look, if you tell anyone I'm actually being nice, I'll have to kill a puppy in front of Cameron to get my reputation back. But listen to me. You work in the specialty with the highest death rate of any there is. And it's not all old people in nursing homes, sometimes it's young people. You are going to lose lots of patients, lots of dead kids. Do you really want to hurt for every one of them? Are you that much of a masochist? I enjoy seeing people in pain, and I don't want you to suffer for every person you can't save. You're only human, and you can't single-handedly cure cancer. You really want to hurt for them all?"

It was only then that tears filled his eyes. "I know I'm human, House. What I don't know is why, as a human, I don't feel devastated over the horrible and painful death of a child!"

House wasn't sure what to say, how to help him. "You don't have to take the world on your shoulders, Jimmy."

The tears were bravely held back. "It makes me a horrible person to not be hurt. I should feel worse."

He put his hand on Wilson's shoulder, well aware that he was breaking his own rule about personal contact for the second time in five minutes. "You've seen a lot of people die. If you hurt for every single person who dies, you'll end up with more scar tissue than heart." Wilson looked up at him, hope flickering in his moist eyes, so House plunged on. He held up his right hand. "When I first started needing a third leg, my hand hurt like hell. Blistered, bled, gave me all sorts of trouble. Took a long time to form this callus, but now it doesn't hurt anymore. It doesn't make me any less human, just a basic physiological reaction. The mind can form calluses too. Same principle."

Wilson shook his head. "But I don't want a callus. I still want to feel human. If it doesn't hurt to lose, where's the motivation to play your best? If I don't play my best, more people die. But I won't care, and then things are on their way to hell!"

There was no easy answer, no way to make his friend feel better. He wasn't hurting over the death of the kid, but he was torturing himself even worse out of guilt for that lack of pain. But hurt was hurt, and Wilson was the one person House couldn't handle seeing in pain. "Come on, Jimmy. Let's go home. I'll drive, and we'll get the good stuff, sure to knock you on your ass."

Wilson looked indignantly at the bottle on the floor. "That IS the good stuff!" House was looking at him almost sympathetically, the look House himself despised, and Wilson wouldn't abide causing it. "And you have something to help me get drunk?"

"How drunk do you want to be? 'Til you can't spell 'oncologist'?"

Wilson shook his head. "'Til I can't spell 'cancer'"

House nodded. "You got it. Let's go."

They walked slowly to the elevator, and as he pushed the button, House looked over at Wilson for a second. The pain was still there, but not as close to the surface. "Hey," he said, leaning his cane against the wall and holding up his right hand again. Wilson stared at his palm, hoping House had an answer hidden in it. "If I want the callus to go away, all I have to do is take a break. Not use it for a few days. Take a break. It'll hurt again when I get back."

Wilson gently touched the thickened skin on his friend's hand, and House endured the touch, knowing Wilson might well find his answer there. Soft fingers traced the outer edge until the elevator stopped. As they stepped out, Wilson almost smiled. "I think I have some vacation time coming."

House did smile. Wilson had found his answer.


	2. When it hurts again

A/N: This came from a conversation with my partner at work. This was another extremely rough weekend for us ambulance cowboys, and as usual, I tend to take it out on our two favorite doctors. Hope you enjoy this! Pleas read and respond!

Wilson had been back for almost three weeks when House found him sitting on the balcony watching the sun sink into the horizon, slumped on the ground, minus his lab coat, with a bottle of Jack Daniel in his hand. He couldn't hear him crying, but he could tell by the way his shoulders quivered that he was. House didn't want to go out there. He didn't want to take this on. After their talk over a month ago, Wilson had gotten up the next morning from House's couch, hung over as hell, and called Cuddy asking for a week off. Then House spoke to her quietly, and she gave him two. He had asked House to pick up his mail, and that was it. Ten minutes after he left, House found his cell phone and pager lying on the counter, deliberately left behind.

When he had come back he had looked better. His normally pale features had a slight tan. House remembered thinking that he really must have been taking a break from being an oncologist if he actually got some sun, as paranoid as he was about the disease he treated. He had a spring in his step that had been missing for a while. Patients, visitors, and the nursing staff alike were all treated to his best boy-wonder smile, bright as ever, as if someone had chanced the bulb. House twisted his hand on his cane, thinking about the nearly insensitive skin of his palm. Then he opened the door.

Wilson didn't even look up. House limped over beside him and poked the bottle with his cane. Wilson still didn't respond. Sighing, House slid down the wall to sit uncomfortably beside him. "You realize the problem with what I told you, right?" Wilson gave him an uncomprehending stare, so he went on. "When you let the callus go away, it's back to blisters and bleeding and pain. That's the purpose of calluses. They form to protect you."

Wilson still didn't answer him, just stared out into the sky with tears rolling down his cheeks. House glared at him. "Look, this is what you wanted! You wanted to be able to feel again, now you can! Are you going to drink yourself numb again now?"

Still staring at the deepening red of the sky, Wilson finally spoke. "Looks like blood, doesn't it?" House followed his gaze, then nodded. Yeah, it did look like blood. Knowing it was just gases burning in the atmosphere didn't take away the illusion, especially for two men who saw so much of it. "You've lived with pain for a long time, House."

Not sure where this was going, he nodded again. "You know I have."

"And you hate it. You curse it in the mornings when you try to get out of bed, during the day if someone accidentally bumps into you, at night when you can hardly stand up in the shower. I would trade anything for you not to have to go through that. My own heath, if I could." Wilson turned and met his eyes for the first time, and saw the same young man he used to know, drowning in tears. "But it would scare the mortal piss out of you if you woke up one morning and you couldn't feel your leg, wouldn't it? You'd check yourself in here so fast it would make your head spin. Much faster than the pain would."

House thought about that for a moment. That was his biggest fear. The nerve damage progressing. Losing his leg completely. Even the pain was worth it to not become simply a fraction of a man. "But that's not the same. I could lose a large piece of myself. True, it's a piece that's been damaged for a while, but damaged is better than gone!"

Still looking into his friend's eyes, Wilson nodded slowly, and the last bit of the puzzle fell into place for House. Of course it was the same. Maybe the callus wasn't as good a metaphor as the infarction was. If Wilson had kept that part of himself shut away as it had been a month ago, away from stimulation and metaphoric blood flow, it would have withered away and died. And it would have been much more than losing a leg. It would have meant losing the man that James Wilson was, the man he had tried to be. It would have cost him any satisfaction he could ever get from his job, he would have given up on House, and then he would have nothing left. Shit. House closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cold brick.

"I know what you meant now," Wilson said suddenly, staring back at the darkening sky. "Why you fought so hard to keep your leg. You can't just get rid of a part of you just because it hurts. Even if it hurts a lot."

House pulled out his ever-present pill bottle and took a vicodin. "Yeah, but I have these. What do you do for the pain?"

Wilson held up the bottle of whiskey. "I have this. And I have you. And I still have most of my little bald kids."

"Don't say that, Jimmy." House's voice was dead serious. "Don't make jokes about them and don't call them little bald kids. You don't think that way."

Giving him a curious glance, Wilson said, "But you do."

Still serious, House said, "You are not me. And I'm thankful for that. You're a better person, and I don't want you to be me." Wilson looked surprised. "If I lose my leg, I'm just another cripple. More miserable to myself, no different to anyone else. But if you lost…what you could have lost you would become something much worse than a cripple. Me."

Wilson didn't know what to say to that. He offered House the bottle. House took it. "What?" he asked. "No lecture about mixing narcotics and alcohol?" He took a drink straight from the bottle, more than a shot glass could hold. "Nothing about how my liver is already shredded from the vicodin and now the alcohol on top of it? You're slipping." He took another drink.

They sat there until House's leg started to ache from the position and he had to stand up. Wilson helped him to his feet, and he accepted the help because he knew it was because he had been drinking rather than because of his leg. What he didn't understand was how Wilson was still so steady. Was he that upset, like last time? 'Can't even get drunk' upset? Suddenly, another thought occurred to him. "Uh, if we're both drunk, how are we going to get home?"

Wilson shook his head with a half smile. "Sherlock Holmes you're not. Did you even look at the bottle?" He picked up the fifth of liquor, and House saw that it was almost full. All that was missing was what he had drunk.

"I don't understand. You weren't drinking? That little girl died, and you were out here crying, and I thought…"

Wilson cut him off. "This was just in case the pain got to be too much. In case I just couldn't take it. I got close, though, close enough to actually open it." House opened his mouth to speak, but Wilson beat him to it. "Like the morphine in the box on top of your bookcase."

House's eyes widened. How had he known about that? He'd deal with that later. "You wanted to hurt?"

Wilson leaned back over the ledge. "I was afraid to be numb again."

House shook his head. "That's why I have my vicodin. I don't want to hurt. I don't just try to tough it out, or anything crazy like that."

"I know. But it scares me how far out there I was. Wanted to feel something, anything. Now that I do, I didn't want to stop it unless I had to."

House nodded. "Come on, then. You can drive me home, buy me some Chinese food, and watch bad movies while we get rid of your 'morphine'. You can even pick the movies." He punctuated this with another drink of Jack and handed Wilson a few Kleenex.

Obediently, Wilson blew his nose and wiped his eyes, and except for the puffiness you wouldn't have known he had been crying. He gestured to the bottle. "You can have that. I'm not drinking tonight."

They walked side by side to the car, and Wilson got in the driver's side. They left House's bike for tomorrow "Being numb one night won't out you back where you were." He cringed inwardly at the words he was about to say. They sounded like Cameron's words, but they suited Wilson right now. "Getting your heart broken isn't your punishment for losing the fight for that kid's life."

Wilson's head jerked up again. "It's not about punishing myself, House! It's called being human. You should try it sometime!"

House carefully studied the recently acquired lines on Wilson's face, the hurt in his eyes, the slight swelling around them from crying. He then replied quietly, not intending Wilson to hear. "No, thanks, Jimmy. I'd better leave that to you masochists."


End file.
